How to Install Flock on Ubuntu

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This is the quick-and-dirty way to install Flock on Ubuntu and it involves installation to the /home folder.  This will allow the browser to update using regular user permissions; ie the user will not have to run this browser as root (sudo) to update the program.  It will update similarly to the way it updates in Windows.

  1. Download the browser from here.
  2. Copy the downloaded tar file to your /home directory.
  3. Right-click on the archive, and choose “extract here”.
  4. A folder will be created in the /home directory.
  5. To create an entry in your menu, (I’m assuming the user is using Gnome), right click on the application menu, navigate to the “internet” menu, and click “new item”.  In this “item”, name it.  Then click on “browse” to create a command for it.  Go to /home/flock and click on “flock-browser”.  Click “open” and the command box will be populated.  To create an icon for this menu item, click on the launchpad looking thing-o button.  This opens a window that shows you the available icons.  The proper icon won’t be there, so click on “browse”.  Go to /home/flock again, and this time, click on the folder labeled “icons”.  Click “open” and now you’ll be able to pick which icon you want.  You can further customize this by adding a saying like “Browse the social web” or something.
  6. You’re pretty much done.  All that needs to be done is to grab all the plugins from Firefox and copy them to Flock.  To do this, type this command: “sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/plugins /home/flock/plugins”.
  7. You’re done! Now you should be able to use Flock just like Firefox.  Don’t forget to sign in to your blog, twitter, flickr, facebook, etc so you can use it to it’s fullest.  I also recommend going to the Mozilla Addons page to get adblock, flashblock and other addons you can’t live without.  Also, you can go here and get flock-only extensions.

And there you have it.  Please see this post for some more information on installation.  If you do it this way, however, you won’t be able to update via the automatic updater unless you run it as root.